INTO THE NEBULA Page 16

  Picard paused, observing Khozak, then resumed. “I assume that this constant transmission results in the low-level energy field that blankets the system. Sometime in the last few decades, they have found a way to come through themselves. The most recent energy surge you detected was Zalkan vanishing from this very room in a flash equally as blinding as those in which the ships vanished. If we can believe him—and Counselor Troi has said that we can—he is part of an underground network of scientists working against what he calls the Directorate, the people in control of that world. The Directorate, he says, has no interest in stopping the Plague. Zalkan’s is the group in the mines, and he hopes that, if they can get a small portion of the dilithium, they would be able to . . . set things right and perhaps stop the Plague, although he did not have time to elaborate before President Khozak and his men burst in, precipitating his abrupt departure.

  “He has been experimenting here,” Picard added, looking again toward Khozak, “in this lab, trying to develop a means of blocking the transmitted material from small areas, possibly an energy field similar to what Commander La Forge is working on. I suspect Zalkan’s exposure to the energy fields generated by his own experiments is more responsible for his current state of health than his travels between realities.”

  “You left out a couple of small details, Captain,” Riker said when Picard fell silent. “For example, since there was some mention of your possibly being killed, can I assume the four of you are being held against your will? If so, by whom? And why?”

  “I can answer only the first two of those questions, Number One. President Khozak will have to answer the last.”

  “He’s the one who’s holding you?”

  “He and a group similar to the one that first met you at the airlock.”

  “I see. Can I speak to President Khozak?”

  “You have been speaking to him, Number One. The question is, will he speak to you? Mr. President?”

  Khozak blinked, his grip on his weapon faltering for a moment but recovering. “What do you wish to speak about, Commander Riker?”

  “I should think that was obvious, Mr. President,” Riker snapped. “Why are you holding three Starfleet officers and one of your own people against their will?”

  “I’m curious about that myself, Mr. President,” Picard added when Khozak didn’t respond for several seconds.

  “I heard Zalkan and you,” Khozak said finally, with the angry sound of a man who was beginning to have second thoughts—or, worse, perhaps his first real thoughts—about an overly hasty action. “I heard the two of you calmly discussing the fact that he had destroyed Krantin!”

  “Zalkan’s world, perhaps,” Picard said, “as represented by the Directorate, not Zalkan personally. He personally, along with his friends, appears to be risking his life opposing the Directorate.” Picard gestured at the benches of jury-rigged equipment. “He has even been trying to develop a means of blocking the Plague.”

  “And am I supposed to take his word for that? He, whose people have destroyed our entire world?”

  “You can take our word for it that he was telling the truth, Mr. President. Counselor Troi is an empath. She knows if a person is lying, and she is convinced Zalkan was telling the truth.”

  Khozak swallowed audibly. “But I can not tell if a person is telling the truth. I do not know if you and your—your so-called empath are telling the truth or lying.” He shook his head angrily. “You come here with your ships and your Federation and you tell us things that no sane person would believe, that you can travel between the stars not in centuries but in hours, that you can ‘transport’ yourselves magically from place to place, that you have brought Koralus back from the dead, and now you tell us to take the word of someone who just admitted—”

  Khozak broke off. His voice had been rising with each phrase. With an obvious effort, he lowered his voice. “How am I to know your so-called Federation is not just another ‘Directorate’?”

  “Your reaction is quite understandable under the circumstances,” Picard said calmly. “However, if you will consider the situation rationally, you can surely see that we have no reason to—”

  He was cut off by a half-gasp, half-scream from the doorway. All eyes darted in that direction, most of the weapons, including Khozak’s, following suit. Ahl Denbahr stood there, mouth agape.

  “Technician Denbahr—” Khozak began.

  “What are you doing?” she almost shouted.

  “It’s all right,” Picard said hastily, but Denbahr wasn’t listening. She seemed oblivious to the weapons, as well, as she stalked forward and stood confronting Khozak.

  “I went to the lab, and Zalkan wasn’t there. I’d seen him talking to Counselor Troi, and he looked really bad, and I wanted to know—” She broke off, looking around. “Where is he?” Her scowl refocused on Khozak. “What have you done with him? I know you’ve never trusted him, but—”

  She broke off again, shaking her head violently, as if trying to jar her thoughts into coherence. Her eyes went again to the weapons. “Are you completely insane? These people are the only chance Krantin has to survive! Without them, the power plant will shut down or destroy itself in five years at the most! Can’t you understand that?”

  “I understand more than you imagine!” Khozak snapped. “Zalkan’s people are responsible for the Plague! I heard him admit it! And these people—I just can’t take a chance on—”

  “The rest of you!” she said, her voice still almost a shout as she abandoned Khozak and jerked around to glare at the guards. “This is crazy! I swear, these people are our only chance! You’re going to ruin everything if you keep listening to Khozak! Put down those—”

  As her eyes cast about from guard to guard, she suddenly spotted the comm units. She darted a quick look at Picard’s unadorned tunic, and without hesitation lunged forward, grasping the comm units and turning to throw them to him.

  Khozak, taken unaware by Denbahr’s sudden action, recovered and lunged after her and caught her arm, his weapon forgotten as it clattered to the floor. An instant later, the comm units were jarred from her hand and hit the floor and bounced noisily. Picard winced, knowing that it must have sounded like a series of explosions to the listeners on the Enterprise.

  “Captain!” Riker’s voice erupted from the comm units again. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  “Affirmative, Number One,” Picard said quickly. “Continue to stand by.”

  “Data? Deanna? Someone respond! Koralus!”

  His comm unit’s transmit function must have been deactivated by the fall, Picard realized abruptly. “Activate one of them, now!” Picard snapped. “The fall—”

  “If no one responds in five seconds, I’m engaging the transporter, wide scan!” Riker’s voice announced from all four comm units. “If any of you can hear me, I still have a lock on your comm units. Stand by to beam up!” Immediately he began a countdown.

  Suddenly, Khozak released Denbahr’s arm and both lurched toward the comm units, but Khozak roughly shoved her aside as she leaned down to pick them up.

  Khozak didn’t lean down. Instead, he raised his foot and, as Riker’s voice reached “Two” in the countdown, brought the heel of his boot down solidly on two of the comm units and, at “One,” on the other two.

  The silence was total. Picard’s stomach knotted as he wondered if perhaps Riker had been right after all when he had recommended carrying phasers.

  Khozak looked around, shivering. His eyes met Picard’s, and what Picard saw there began to loosen the knot in his stomach.

  “I’m sorry,” Khozak said, his voice shaking, “but I couldn’t take the chance.”

  Picard grimaced. Not that they were out of the woods yet.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “ENERGIZE!” RIKER COMMANDED.

  “Something’s happened,” the transporter chief’s voice came seconds later. “We’ve lost the lock.”

  “Get it back!”

  “Trying, Commande
r, but there’s nothing there. The comm units have shut down.”

  “All four?”

  “All four.”

  What the hell is going on down there? “Can you scan the last known location?”

  “Negative, Commander, not under these conditions. Without the fluctuating energy field, we might be able—”

  “Understood, Chief. Keep trying for the comm units. Mr. Worf, anything more on that energy surge? Could it have been so close it knocked out the comm units? And can the sensors locate our people?”

  “It’s unlikely that the energy surge had anything to do with the comm units’ failure, Commander,” the Klingon said. “The captain’s was operating normally for minutes after the surge. And even from low orbit, the sensors can neither distinguish individual life-forms nor distinguish between Krantinese and human.”

  “Chief,” Riker said, returning his attention to the transporters, “can we transport down to approximately the last known location of the comm units?”

  “Not safely, Commander. You could be placed within a few hundred meters of the location, but that’s a few hundred meters in any direction, including up and down.”

  “You’re saying we could end up, say, a hundred meters above the city’s roof?”

  “Entirely possible, Commander.”

  “Would point to point from a shuttlecraft on the ground be more accurate?”

  “Yes, but not accurate enough to be safe, not if you’re trying for the captain’s location.”

  “But accurate enough to get someone inside the city, close to ground level, as opposed to in midair a hundred meters up?”

  “Affirmative, Commander. It would get you well within the range of the surface proximity detectors, even under these conditions.”

  Riker was silent a moment, grimacing, then stood abruptly. “Stores, bring five comm units to the shuttlebay. I’ll be taking them down. Mr. Worf, assemble a security detail and meet me in the shuttlebay. Chief—”

  “Commander,” Worf interrupted, “there have been . . . several more energy surges, all from the vicinity of the mines.”

  Riker’s stomach lurched. If he had been able to reestablish the lock and had been in the process of beaming them up—

  “Shuttlebay, Mr. Worf,” he said, striding toward the turbolift, tapping his comm unit as he went. Behind him, Worf surrendered the tactical station to Ensign Thompson. “Commander La Forge, to the bridge. You have the conn.”

  “On my way, Commander,” Geordi’s voice came back an instant later.

  Riker was emerging into the shuttlebay when Ensign Thompson’s voice came through his comm unit. “Commander Riker! An EM signal from the planet.”

  “Patch it through, Ensign.” Frowning, Riker waited. What did these people think they were doing? Was this going to be a ransom demand of some kind? And it should be him down there, not the captain, he thought angrily. That was his job as first officer, and it was also his job to tell the captain when—

  A crackling of static snapped him instantly out of his litany of self-recriminations. A moment later, an out-of-breath female voice was shouting over the static and the distortion: “Starship Enterprise, please respond! Starship Enterprise, it is urgent that you respond immediately! Starship Enterprise—”

  “This is the Enterprise, Commander William Riker. Go ahead.”

  “Commander! Thank God! This is Ahl Denbahr—”

  “What happened to our people, to their comm units?”

  “They’re all right, Commander!” Her voice came down from the level of a shout to being just loud enough to be heard over the continuing static. “Captain Picard and the others, I mean, and Koralus, not the comm units. The comm units are smashed.”

  “Smashed? What happened?”

  “Khozak smashed them, don’t ask me why! He’ll be here in a minute, they all will be, if they ever quit arguing, and you can ask them. Him. He’ll say it was my fault, but—You heard me yelling at Khozak, right? Your gadgets were still working then?”

  “We heard you, yes.”

  “Khozak wouldn’t listen, so I grabbed the comm units and tried to toss them back to your people, but Khozak grabbed me and they fell on the floor, and then you started acting like you couldn’t hear us but you could still grab everyone in the room as long as the comm units were working, so Khozak panicked and smashed them, or at least stepped on them as hard as he could, and then your captain started warning him he’d better get in touch with you some way, there was no telling what you might do, but Khozak was still arguing, so I ran back here to the radio we use when I go out to the power plant and I remembered you were able to pick it up on your shuttlecraft and I just hoped—Anyway, here we are. Or here I am, anyway.”

  Riker almost laughed, partly at the breakneck speed of her account, partly in relief at the news that Deanna and the others were all right. “You’re saying our people are definitely in no immediate danger, is that right?” he asked, turning as he heard the turbolift doors hiss open. Worf and four phaser-armed ensigns emerged.

  “Definitely. I don’t think even Khozak is that insane. Although some of the stuff he was ranting about—I mean, he was trying to tell me that Zalkan was responsible for the Plague!”

  “Not Zalkan himself,” Riker said, gesturing for Worf and the others to wait, “but the world that he’s from apparently is responsible.”

  For a long moment there was silence except for the continuing static.

  “The world that he’s from?”

  “An alternate world, much like Krantin,” Riker said. “I gather it’s a complicated story, but true. They can explain it better down there than I can. As I understand it, however, they got the information directly from Zalkan himself before he . . . left.”

  “Left? Where is he? That’s why I came barging in there in the first place. I couldn’t find him, and he’d been looking even worse than usual after that meeting with your captain and the Council. But Zalkan isn’t from any other world! He’s the one who pulled me back out of the computer fantasies ten years ago, and he’s been trying to find a way to block the Plague, not make it worse!”

  “That’s quite probably true, but as I said—” Riker broke off as he caught the sound of faint voices from Denbahr’s end of the hookup. “Captain? Are you there?”

  The thin sound of footsteps, and then: “We’re right here, Number One. I assume Technician Denbahr explained about the comm units.”

  “She said President Khozak smashed them. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “I was about to come down with Lieutenant Worf and a security detail. Is that advisable?”

  “Not at the moment, Number One. The situation is calm but not yet resolved, and I suspect a security detail would be counterproductive at best.”

  “You’re still being detained, then?”

  “Affirmative, Number One, but Counselor Troi assures me we are not in any immediate danger.”

  “So has Technician Denbahr. But I heard what you said earlier, Captain, about intentional harm versus accidental. Does that still apply?”

  “I do not believe so, Number One. Their weapons have been put away. Our problem now is to convince President Khozak of our good intentions, not an easy task under the circumstances.”

  “Zalkan and the Plague and the rest?”

  “Precisely, Number One. Mistrust and suspicion are understandable reactions,” Picard said, his diplomatic tone obvious even over the static that still plagued the connection. “Were I in President Khozak’s position, without the aid of Counselor Troi, I don’t know that I wouldn’t have the same suspicions as he.”

  “Understood, Captain. But about the comm units—”

  “He has apologized, Number One, but he would prefer they not be replaced, at least not immediately. President Khozak has agreed to keep this link open, however. He assures me it will be monitored at all times.”

  “As you wish, Captain. You should know, however, there was another series of energy surges just minutes ago
, all from the vicinity of the mines. I assume they were related somehow to Zalkan’s disappearance.”

  “I would assume the same, Number One. My own speculation would be that the mines were being evacuated.”

  Or extra people and machines were being brought in to get at the dilithium quickly, now that Zalkan’s people know they’ve been discovered, Riker thought, but if the captain isn’t saying it out loud, neither will I. “Mine, too, Captain,” he said. “Would President Khozak object if we sent another shuttlecraft down to verify it?”

  “I would!” Khozak’s voice came over the link. “Until we—”

  “And how would you even know if they went down in the mine?” Denbahr asked angrily. “President Khozak, if you—”

  “I’m well aware of your views,” Khozak snapped, sounding rattled. “And of your friendship with the traitor Zalkan!”

  “Zalkan is no traitor! He’s done more for this city than—”

  “I believe,” Picard’s voice overrode Denbahr’s, “that a few minutes of rational discussion are in order.”

  “I am being rational!” Denbahr shot back. “It’s this—this president who’s being totally irrational.”

  “Calm discussion, then,” Picard said. “President Khozak?”

  “It would be a great relief, Captain,” Khozak said, “but with Technician Denbahr present—”

  Picard cut off another outburst by Denbahr. “We can start the discussion,” he said, “by bringing her up to date on the matter of Zalkan.”

  With questions and loud expressions of disbelief, the updating took nearly half an hour, by which time Riker and Worf were back on the bridge. In the meantime, some inventive work on the EM link had reduced the static to a more tolerable level. Picard, with occasional assists from Troi, had kept the discussion, if not calm, at least not explosive.